December 11th "2023" daily prep

Welcome to day 345 of the year! Known as Holiday Food Drive for Needy, Animals Day, Kaleidoscope Day, National APP day and National Have a Bagel Day. If you were born on this day, you were likely conceived the week of March 20th. Your star sign is “Sagittarius” and your birthstone is Blue Topaz.
2005 – A huge fire continued to burn at Buncefield oil depot near Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire. It was the largest of its kind in peacetime Europe and the noise of the explosions could be heard as far away as the Netherlands.
Todays birthdays
1954 – Jermaine Jackson (69), American singer, songwriter and bassist known for being a member of the Jackson family (“Blame It on the Boogie”), born in Indiana, United States.
1961 – Marco Pierre White (62), British chef, restaurateur, and the first British chef to be awarded three Michelin stars, born in Leeds.
1963 – Nigel Winterburn (60), English retired professional footballer (Arsenal, West Ham United), coach and current television personality for BT Sport, born in Arley, Warwickshire.
1968 – Fabrizio Ravanelli (55), Italian football manager and former international player (Middlesbrough, Lazio, Derby County), born in Perugia, Italy.
1974 – Ben Shephard (49), English television presenter (Tipping Point) and journalist (Good Morning Britain), born in Epping, Essex.
The day today
1952 – Derek Bentley, aged 19, and 16 year old Christopher Craig, were found guilty of the murder of a policeman in south London. Because of his age, Craig was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure, while Bentley, who did not fire the gun, was sentenced to hang. Despite a public outcry, the sentence was carried out on 27th January 1953.
1967 – Concorde, the world’s first supersonic airliner, was rolled out of its hangar for public viewing for the first time.
1975 – An Icelandic gunboat opened fire on unarmed British fishery support vessels in the North Atlantic Sea, heightening the ‘Cod War’.
1990 – The Government set aside £42M to British haemophiliacs who became infected with the HIV virus after being treated with contaminated Factor VIII
2017 – A trial for Huntington’s disease procured positive results. This was a breakthrough trial, as it was the first time a drug had suppressed the effects of an incurable brain disorder.
Today in music
1968 – Liverpool folk group The Scaffold were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Lily The Pink’, this year’s Christmas No.1. ‘Lily the Pink’ was a new version of an older folk song entitled ‘The Ballad of Lydia Pinkham’, and a similar version was the unofficial regimental song of the Royal Tank Corps, at the end of World War II.
1971 – UK comedian Benny Hill was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with the innuendo-laden novelty song, ‘Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)’, giving Hill his only No.1 and the Christmas No.1 hit of 1971. The song was originally written in 1955 as the introduction to an unfilmed screenplay about Hill’s milkman experiences.
1983 – The Flying Pickets were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with their version of the Yazoo song ‘Only You’. Also this years Christmas No.1 and the first a cappella chart-topper in the UK.
1993 – The character Mr Blobby as featured on UK TV’s ‘The Noel Edmunds House Party’, started a one-week run as the UK No.1 single with the novelty song ‘Mr Blobby’. The single later received the dubious honour of being voted the most irritating Christmas No.1 single in a HMV poll.
2019 – Ed Sheeran was named the UK’s artist of the decade by the Official Charts Company. Sheeran achieved the milestone after a combined run of 12 No.1 singles and albums between 2010 and 2019 – more than any other artist. He’s also had the most weeks (79) at No.1 in both the album and singles charts in this period.
Today in history
1620 – Thirty Native Americans attacked Myles Standish (English military officer and colonist) and a group of eighteen settlers. This became known as the “First Encounter.”
1688 – James II fled to France, never to return and was forced to abdicate after William of Orange had landed in England on 5th November.
1769 – Venetian blinds were patented (in London) by Edward Beran.
1877 – English photographer Eadweard Mubridge won a long standing bet for a millionaire by proving that a horse’s four feet are all off the ground simultaneously once every stride. He used multiple cameras around the track, each taking a single frame via a series of trip wires.
1914 – The Royal Flying Corps, which later became the RAF, adopted the red, white and blue roundel to identify its aircraft more easily during World War I.
Fact of the day
Contrary to popular belief, “Xmas” is not a trendy attempt to “take Christ out of Christmas”. “Christianity” was spelled “Xianity” as far back as 1100. X, or Chi, is the Greek first letter of “Christ” so “X” and back in the fourth century, Constantine the Great often referenced the shorthand version. Some say it was as early as 1021 that the abbreviation “XPmas” was used to reference the holiday, which was later shortened to “Xmas.”